


The Way Things Could've Been

by meimentomori



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Gay Keith (Voltron), M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rewrite, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-04 23:32:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15851682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meimentomori/pseuds/meimentomori
Summary: "We're a team, even if all we do is argue. We've got your backs through anything."Basically a rewrite of the entirety of Voltron, with new plot points and everything.





	The Way Things Could've Been

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I felt the need to make a few things clear before you go into this fic!
> 
> 1\. Pidge IS referred to as male until she reveals who she actually is to the team.  
> 2\. While I did tag this with klance and adashi, their relationships will not come until much later (pretty much slow burn).  
> 3\. I'm certain that this has already been done but this is my take on Voltron, so please don't compare it to any others.
> 
> Now that those are out of the way, enjoy the fic! Comments and kudos are appreciated as always. <3

Thirty minutes.

Lance had been sitting in Iverson’s office for thirty minutes, trying to get him to assign himself, Hunk, and Pidge to different piloting teams. The commander wouldn’t budge on his choice to group them up, countering every argument that the cadet thought of with something of a similar caliber. If they were truly going to go on missions someday, he said, then there was no telling who they’d be paired up with. That in space, there were no second chances, no simulations. Out there, everything was real, and one small argument could cause a ship to spiral out of control and the death of an entire crew. It was the same spiel every time, tweaked slightly depending on Lance’s choice of words. There weren’t many more things that he could suggest, at this rate.

And Hunk and Pidge didn’t look like they were willing to wait much longer to get out of his office, either.

“Maybe if we added another member to our team, things would be easier?” Lance suggested innocently, trying not to force Iverson into a worse mood than he already was.

The commander thought about it for a moment, expression growing darker as he did. The seventeen year old hadn’t seen him this angry in years. Not since a certain fight broke out back when he was just a newbie, anyways. 

“Why do you think the best pilot in your class flunked out?”

“Discipline issues?”

“That’s right.” Iverson nodded tightly. Hunk nearly gulped at the hostility of it. Either that or his nausea from earlier still wasn’t quite cleared up. “He tried to pull stuff like this all the time back when he was here.”

He leaned closer into Lance, forcing him to look into his opened left eye. The right one was long gone. A casualty of one of their missions, the others in his class had told him. One of his teammates during a mission was trying to prepare the ship. Iverson, who knew the inside of that particular model inside and out, had peered over their shoulder to give them pointers on what to tighten and loosen so that everything would run smoothly once they fired it back up. Whoever it was hadn’t taken this advice as friendly. They read into it as condescending, waving him off to go back to the helm and wait for their signal to take flight. The commander wasn’t about to give up so easily so, after a moment or two of his partner cursing under his breath, he mentioned something that might do the trick. 

In their haste, they turned around to give him a piece of their mind, only to jab the wrench that they’d been using right into his eye.

After that day, no one ever heard from the culprit ever again.

“So whatever you do, don’t follow in his footsteps.” He added with a bash of his fist on the desk, slowly leaning back in his chair to let the moment sink in a little longer.

Lance never did understand exactly why everybody seemed to hate Keith. Pidge had never met him, and he and Hunk had never been particularly close to him, but there didn’t seem to be anything evil about him. Sure, he’d stolen Shiro’s care on the day that they’d been tested by simulation to see who would get in and he wouldn’t. Yes, he might’ve beaten up James that one time for mocking his parents (or lack of). But everything that he did, he never meant anything horrible by. In all of those instances, someone had set him off. Lance didn’t know how others could possibly think that life was all that easy for him. The Garrison had been one of his only chances to start fresh, away from the orphanage that he’d overheard someone say that he came from. It must’ve been a pretty lonely life to not have any family caring for you, aside from some strangers in a place that felt nothing like home.

Lance might not have thought the highest of Keith. There’d been a time when they were almost always neck in neck during their simulations, struggling to control the mission when everyone else around him was yelling for him to stop. He’d even challenged this show off to some silent duels of their own, much to the dismay of their fellow cadets. But Lance had to admit, despite the temper and the desire to impress, Keith was the most talented out of all of them. There were things that that mullet had been able to do that he didn’t even have the stomach to try. Or rather, Hunk didn’t. He’d given Lance the nickname tailor ages ago because of his many attempts at threading the needle so to speak, which meant perilous flights through hoops of space rock that always caused turbulence that sent him straight to puking.

Maybe if Iverson brought back Keith and they could put their differences aside, the four of them could make a pretty kickass team.

“Every mission begins and ends with teamwork.” He continued, voice a lot more steady than before. “The ones that fail are the ones where they did nothing but bicker back and forth the entire time. A lot like a certain group of cadets I know.”

Pidge was the one who snapped to attention at this, Hunk reaching across from behind where Lance sat to try and grab him so he wouldn’t lunge at Iverson. He swatted his hands away, though the other two kept their eyes on his every move, ready to spring into action if thing escalated out of control. “Then what about the men on the Kerberos mission? Everyone said that they were as close as brothers, and you don’t think it’s weird that they just magically never came back?”

“Son, there were a million different ways that mission could’ve gone wrong.” Iverson’s voice was starting to reach its threshold in volume. The one that, if broken, would lead to yelling that they’d never see the end of. “Communication back home was an issue enough with how far out they were going. Teamwork couldn’t have saved them if there were circumstances that got them that we couldn’t account for out there.”

“You mean like aliens?” Pidge snapped back. “Because-”

Lance covered a hand over his mouth before he could continue with what he was going to say. Hunk stood up and went to his right, helping him to pull Pidge out of the room before he could break free of his grasp. “Sorry, sir. I think he’s still a little disoriented from earlier. Thank you for taking the time to meet with us about this, we’ll take note of everything that you said!”

They shut the door behind them before Iverson could give them yet another tongue lashing.

“What were you doing in there?” Lance asked once they were safely down another hall. If any of the other commanders heard them, they’d be dragged into another one of their offices without even a word to clear their names. “You go ballistic every time they bring up that mission! And for what, exactly? Just to get us into more trouble than we already were?”

“That’s none of your business!” Pidge wriggled his arm free of Hunk’s clamp on his wrist. “Besides, I can’t be the only one here who finds it weird that they never so much as tried to investigate further into where they actually went!”

Hunk place a hand on his shoulder. “Pidge. I don’t think a single person here has no fear about going into space. And I know with us getting older, the reality of us going up there is crashing down on us faster than we can train to prepare for it! But we’re here for you. We’re a team, even if all we do is argue. We’ve got your backs through anything.”

“Sure doesn’t feel like it.” Was all that he said before storming off to his room.

Lance started to walk back to the room that he shared with Hunk, realizing a few steps too late that his roommate was still where he’d left him. He couldn’t help but feel like the two of them had grown to be almost as close as brothers in their past years of training together. Having someone like him by his side had made Lance realize how truly underappreciated Hunk was. Lance noticed all of the issues himself when they were training, but nerves weren’t something that were able to be controlled with the snap of his fingers. He’d thought up ways to try and calm him down, teaching him other things to focus on rather than the dangerous obstacles of the simulation at hand. He’d snuck peppermint leaves from the commissary to try and help combat his nausea, keeping a few extra to help his breath after just to be on the safe side.

While none of these things ever worked, imagining what his school life would’ve been like without him was impossible for Lance. Hunk would stay up with him night after night so that he could help him study. Not too much to the point of where his brains were fried during the next day, but just enough so that he’d have grades high enough to be considered proficient. He would encourage Lance whenever he didn’t feel like getting out of bed just to go to another simulation that they would fail in the morning, saying that if they never tried to practice as a team, that they would never become one. Everything that Hunk did for him, reminded Lance of his siblings and their undying support, which eased the homesickness he felt just enough so that he wouldn’t fall so far that he couldn’t pick himself up. Blood related or not, they were brothers, and Lance would do anything for him.

Even if it was nothing compared to what Hunk had done for him.

“You did all that you could, man.” Lance said, draping an arm around his shoulders as he redirected him to the hall that led to their room. It was only when Hunk was facing this way that he dropped it, grinning as he walked a few feet backwards in front of them. “Now, first one to our room gets the Doritos I stole!”

“Oh, you’re on!” He replied, catching right up to Lance who’d already begun to run, despite there being no proper sound off.

What Hunk didn’t know was that Lance always let him win, no matter how far ahead he’d gotten.

\-------------------------------------

“Do you ever wonder why Pidge is so closed off from everybody?” Lance asked when they were laying in their beds that night, trying to fall asleep to no avail.

Hunk groaned at this question, knowing well what he was trying to suggest by it. It had been a plan that Lance had thought of earlier in the evening over dinner, when Pidge seemed to be nowhere in sight. They would sneak out, grab him, and head out into town for some good old fashioned team bonding. That way, when tomorrow rolled around, they would be able to work together to beat the simulation and show their classmates what they were truly capable of. What his roommate neglected to remember was that every mission like this of his ended up with them in the principal’s office. A place that they couldn’t end up again, after their team’s fiasco that’d already put them on their teachers radars once more. Hunk couldn’t deny that there was some merit to Lance’s plan but in their current position, it was too risky.

“I don't think he’d want us to bother him this late at night.” Hunk yawned, turning onto his side so that he was facing away from Lance. “Get some sleep, Lance. We have a long day tomorrow if we’re gonna make up for today.”

“But we’re never gonna be able to make up for today if we don’t learn how to work together as a team!” Lance whined, accidentally kicking the book that’d been laying at the foot of his bed off of it and onto the floor. “You said it yourself, all that we do is argue! We’re never gonna get past that if we can’t figure out where Pidge leaves his room to go every night!”

That caught Hunk’s attention. He sat straight up in bed, looking at Lance in disbelief. “What did you just say?”

“I’ve seen him sneaking out some nights before and I got curious.” Lance shrugged it off like it was nothing.

“And you never once thought to tell me?” Hunk whispered, trying to keep himself from yelling at the absurdity of Lance hiding this from him. “What if he’d gotten caught?”

“Then we’d break him out of the principal’s office, plain and simple.”

Hunk shook his head. “Nothing about that is either plain or simple.”

Lance thought about his options for a moment. There didn’t seem to be a way for him to be able to convince Hunk to follow him to Pidge’s room, but they also didn’t seem to have much of a choice. So that only left the plan he’d thought of if all else failed. He grabbed a bag and started shoving both his and Hunk’s clothes that weren’t Garrison uniforms into it, adding a few snacks and various other essentials for the road. If they never made it back to their room that night, it was better to be prepared than to be sorry. Hunk tried to grab his stuff away from him as he did but Lance merely swatted his hand away. A pang of guilt shot through his chest when he did but he’d find the time to apologize later. Right now, Lance’s top priority was making sure that the three of them learned, from this night on, how to work as a team.

Which meant no more secret late night excursions, unless everyone was invited.

“So?” Lance asked, after he’d adjusted the bag he’d packed to fit comfortably on his shoulders. “Are you coming or what?”

Hunk thought it over for a moment as Lance opened the door. The hiss of it was somehow never enough to alert the guards nearby that someone was sneaking out, nor did they have the common sense to install alarms on them so that they would never have to worry about it again. The Garrison was expensive, so they might not have had the budget, but still. Hunk figured if they had enough money to shed out on guards, they could fire half of them and use the rest of that money so that they could actually do their jobs. He knew that Lance wasn’t going to budge, no matter what he tried to say to convince him to stay. If there was anything that Hunk had learned in his years of rooming with Lance, it was that when he got an idea like this, he never backed down on it. Not for anything or anyone. 

Hunk sighed as he got out of bed, slipping on the pair of yellow slippers he kept by its side. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“If I didn’t,” Lance said as he shut the door behind him, grinning up at Hunk as soon as he heard it click. “You would’ve known I’d been sneaking out to spy on him by now.”

“Fair enough.” Hunk followed Lance down to the end of the hall, where he peered around the corner to check for guards. “I trust you.”

And rightfully so.

Lance had spent night after night thinking up ways to sneak the two of them out of their room. It involved a lot of crawling on the ground underneath windows, where the other commanders spent their nights discussing the next mission that their own commander was planning, as well as hiding in trash cans and keeping a constant eye out for any hint of movement. But once they were past all of the commotion, their ticket out of there couldn’t have been easier. As Lance had expected, right as they got down to the hall where Pidge’s dorm was, he was shutting the door behind himself. There was a bag on his back full of various clunky looking items, none of which sounded like they were faring too well and they were jostled around by his swift movements. 

“What the hell do you think Pidge keeps in there?” Lance asked in a whisper, nodding towards the emptiness. Both as a sign to Hunk that they could move and as a reference to the bag in question. “Stuff to build a bomb?”

Hunk couldn’t help but snicker at this. “I don’t think he’s an evil genius in that way. It’s obviously a super computer that he uses to hack into the mainframe of the school and put viruses onto their desktops.”

The two of them went back and forth with ideas as they stepped out onto the roof. Lance stopped mid-sentence at the sky above him. It didn’t even look like it was real, with the amount of stars that seemed to have materialized out of nowhere since he’d last had a chance to look up at them. Without any clouds to shroud them from curious eyes or fog to cloud them up with a milky overlay, it felt like their planet had been transformed into nothing but space. That, with every step closer to the edge of the roof Lance took, he was that much closer to doing what he’d always wanted to do. To be able to see eye to eye with the wishes he’d made all of his life. Maybe life had been a simulation this entire time to see if humans were capable of living on the moon, if their surroundings were made out to be exactly like those of Earth.

But there was no way the moon would have felt as indefinite as their homeland, even with a cloaking device covering its true nature.

Hunk nudged Lance’s shoulder, snapping him out of his trance as he pointed at Pidge. It looked like he’d been right after all. Sure enough, there he was with a computer set out in front of them. Lance watched his arms to see if there was any signs of movement, listening in for the clacking of his fingers against the keys, but there was nothing. He was just sitting there, headphones covering his ears, not so much as moving a muscle. There was what looked to be an open notebook sitting next to him, with things drawn and written on it that neither of them could see from where they were standing. Had Pidge already somehow managed to fall asleep slouched over like that? Lance began stepping towards him to take a closer look, careful to make sure he kept the silence from breaking. Once he was close enough, he pulled one of Pidge’s headphones away from his head.

“You come up here to rock out?”

Pidge yelped as he jerked his head back to face his prankster. Lance hadn’t even bothered to soften the blow at least a little with his voice in a whisper, forcing the victim to take that much more time to recover. 

“Lance!” He said once he was able to process all his thoughts, placing his headphones nearly in his lap. “No! This isn’t anything like that.”

“Sure doesn’t look like it.” Hunk said as he pressed a key on the keyboard, causing something to beep so shrilly that Lance was sure he’d broken it. 

“Hunk!” Pidge said as he swatted his hands away, typing something in to repair the damage that had been done to what appeared to look like a radar engulfing his screen. “Don’t touch that! I need to see this screen in case something shows up on it!”

“That’s all that you’ve been doing out here?” Lance asked as he cocked an eyebrow, kneeling down next to Pidge to get a better look. The more he looked at it, the more he noticed how the screen was split. One half seemed to be analyzing any audio frequencies it could pick up on in the atmosphere, while the other was scanning above them for any unidentified objects. “Looking for U.F.Os?”

“This baby does a lot more than that.” Pidge beamed, picking up his notebook to reveal all sorts of crazy drawings on it. He pointed to one word in the middle. 

“Voltron?”

He nodded excitedly, handing the notebook over to him as he handed the headphones over. Lance sat down. “I’ve been picking up alien radio chatter from all over and they’ve all been repeating that one word. Voltron.”

Lance slipped them on, expecting for Pidge to have made something out of nothing.

What he heard, much to his surprise, was exactly what Pidge had described. There wasn’t just one voice that was speaking it, like Lance had anticipated. It was practically impossible to tell just how many there were, from how broken the signals the radios of those speaking were. And there was much more to it than just Voltron. The other words he couldn’t make out better than the brain of their team could, but he could feel their presence. How surreal it was to hear something like this wasn’t a feeling he could entirely describe. Right then and there, Lance was witnessing dozens of alien conversations. Ones of which could be spilling the very secrets of the universe that none of them would be able to understand, even if they could piece every sound byte together. They weren’t the only lifeforms out in the universe.

Lance just hoped they were friendly.

“Is it always this crazy?” He asked after a while, taking the headphones off so that none of that alien mumbo jumbo would distract him. “The conversations, I mean.”

Pidge shook his head, passing the headphones to Hunk so he could take a listen. “It’s the first time they’ve been this active ever.”

“Shouldn’t we tell the Garrison about this?” Hunk asked them after he’d had some time to listen in. “We don’t know if what’s out there is dangerous of not. What if Voltron’s some sort of weapon that they’re building to destroy Earth?”

“Pfft, yeah right.” Lance rolled his eyes. “Like any aliens would name a weapon as powerful as that something as lame as Voltron.”

“Plus, hello.” Pidge gestured to his equipment. “I’m not even supposed to be up here after curfew, remember? If they found out I was doing this, I’d be dead for sure.”

“Well, we are all on thin ice with Iverson, but...” 

Hunk didn’t even have time to finish his sentence before the Garrison’s alarm system started blaring.

“Attention cadets!” Iverson’s voice rang out from the speakers, his tone too serious and strict to be lying about their current situation. “This is not a drill! The entire building is on lockdown! Stay in your rooms until further notice!”

Pidge picked up his binoculars while the other two weren’t looking. They were the special ones that cadets used to scan the sky on clear nights like this, practicing their ability to scan the atmosphere for any incoming foreign objects. What he saw through them was something that they hadn’t put on the schedule that he’d hacked into their mainframe to view. He’d checked it often enough before, to make sure that his findings weren’t yet another set up by them, to know this. The ship that seemed to be hurtling towards the barren desert beyond his line of sight was unlike anything he’d ever seen in his time spent studying to become a mechanic someday. Though he couldn’t make out much, the wingspan was far too big to be any ships of their own and far too slender, as if it were made out of materials nobody had ever seen before.

“Look!” He passed Lance the binoculars to make sure that he wasn’t the only one that saw it. That this wasn’t all a stress induced figment of his imagination. “Do you see that?”

“Are those the aliens?!” Hunk was already putting himself in a tizzy with all of the nerve wracking thoughts of the intentions of the spacecraft plaguing his mind. “Are they coming to kill us?! Man, I didn’t even call my mom today! What if I never get to say goodbye?”

“Relax, Hunk.” Lance waved off his friends worries as he took the binoculars from Pidge. “I’m sure it’s just a piece of space junk or something.”

But when he looked through the lenses, what he saw was nothing but real.

It was so real, in fact, that the explosion that came about from its crash landing seemed to be more than enough to kill whoever had been inside. If there’d been anyone inside, that was. Lance figured that either that or the pilot had surrendered to their fate entirely and not even tried to get their ship back under control. Yet sure enough, the Garrison was on it right away. Rovers bobbed up and down as they ran over bumps, racing against time to reach the wreckage before any curious passersby in the area could get to it first. Within moments, all that was left in their wake was a trail of dust and newly imprinted tire marks that would be pretty easy to follow. There were plenty of cliffs around for them to perch up in without anyone so much as suspecting that they were there. He stood up and passed the binoculars off to Hunk.

“Whoa.” Was all that Lance could manage, just before he leaned down and pulled Pidge to his feet. “We have to go after it!”

Hunk’s eyebrows furrowed with concern after he’d taken a peak at the smoke that was rising up in the distance from the wreckage himself. “But what if it’s dangerous?”

“That’s more the reason to investigate.” Pidge said, swiping the binoculars out of his hand as he swept all of his equipment back into his bag while Lance felt around in his own to make sure nothing had fallen out. “Whatever this is could be far beyond the furthest that anyone from the Garrison has ever gone.”

“Further than Kerberos?”

Pidge practically winced at the question, taking a moment to shake his head to regain his composure. “Absolutely.”

He tried to duck past Lance without further confrontation, but Pidge knew just how much he tended to pry into other people’s lives. Lance pulled him back by one of the zippers on his bag. “You’ve spent all this time out here, trying to find out the truth about that mission, haven’t you?”

Pidge fiddled with the end of his backpack’s strap, avoiding any and all eye contact with him. “I didn’t want to believe that heroes like that could just disappear into thin air. With everything that they’ve done for the Garrison, and for me, I had to at least try to get some peace of mind. I started coming out here to try and find out a reason for their disappearance, like you said, but…” 

Pidge looked up at the sky longingly, like it had stolen a piece of him that it was refusing to give back. “Turns out, my tech’s too weak to scan such far reaches of our solar system.” His head fell to look at the ground. “But I refused to give up on them, so I kept trying until I stumbled upon Voltron. And the rest is history.”

Lance wanted to press the younger boy further but he’d already started walking towards the crash site before he could get a word in. It didn’t seem like it would’ve been the best idea on his part anyways, with the way that he’d snapped at both himself and Hunk earlier, so he accepted his defeat with grace and followed behind his two teammates in silence. In a way he could understand Pidge’s pain. Shiro had been the one that the Garrison had sent to schools in the area to scout out new recruits for their program. The stories that he told all of them were ones that he couldn’t forget even if he tried. How he’d broken record upon record, making the competition between each incoming class even more intense than before. But his favorite story had been the one that hardly anyone paid attention to. One more important than any other one that he’d told them.

Lance shook his head before he could dwell on it too much, not realizing that his cheeks had turned a tell-tale shade of red.

\-----------------------------

Lance was assigned on look out while Pidge was trying to hack his way into the camera system that the Garrison had set up around their quarantine of the remnants of the spacecraft.

“What do you think that is?” He said, pointing to it with his right hand so that Hunk and Pidge’s eyes would follow. A slab of metal was strapped to a table outside, with strange purple markings on it that looked nothing like any type of material that Lance knew from Earth. “A part of the ship?”

“Probably.” Pidge said as he continued his routine, fingers flying faster on the keyboard than Lance had ever seen anyone’s. “Anything else down there?”

“Not much but…” He zeroed in on a girl who was standing just outside the entrance to whatever they’d managed to uncover from the wreckage. She was talking to someone who Lance paid no attention to, rather preoccupied by the way her hair framed her face and her slender figure. “Who the heck is she?”

“Lance!” Pidge bashed Lance on the head, earning him a satisfactory ‘ow!’. “I didn’t give you those so you could stare at girls.”

“You don’t know, he could be staring at guys.” Hunk joked, nudging Lance as he took a peek over his shoulder. He bit his lip. “You know, it’s not too late to go back. We could disguise ourselves as chefs and sneak down into the commissary for a little late night snack?”

Lance took his eyes reluctantly off of the figure before him, looking at his friend with a mixture of confusion and disappointment. “No.” He turned to his right. “What’s the status report, Pidge?”

“We’re in!” He cheered. This joy lasted for a split second, as a flash of recognition crossed his face the moment he noticed who exactly was strapped to the examination table. “Wait, hold on, is that?”

“Holy shit.”

Lance couldn’t believe his eyes as he watched the scene unfold before them. Pidge had even managed to get them audio, so they could hear everything that Shiro was saying. He looked a lot different than any of them remembered, with the front section of his hair now turned a bright white. A deep scar had taken its form across his hero’s nose, one that undoubtedly had an epic story behind it. There was something that Lance noticed that made him gasp without meaning to. Where Shiro’s right arm was supposed to be, there was now a robotic one. The majority of it was a sleek silver, with black accenting the fingertips and various other joints. That had to be the reason that they had him strapped down to the table. That and the fact that he was acting so unlike his usual composed self, which was justified in Lance’s eyes, after all of the horrors he’d inevitably had to face to try and get back to Earth.

“Please, you have to listen to me!” Shiro pleaded with one of the men examining him, keeping a careful eye on every one of their movements. “Aliens are coming! We have to find Voltron and-”

“This is going to hurt a bit but I doubt it’ll be any worse than what happened to you while you were up there.” 

“No, don’t put me under!” Shiro yelled, struggling against his restraints. “You’re making a mistake!”

“They’re not even gonna listen to him?” Lance asked Pidge, fed up at the mistreatment of someone who’d come back from trauma that he couldn’t begin to imagine. Pidge shook his head, readjusting his glasses to get a better look. “That man’s a legend!”

“We have to find a way to sneak in and stop them before they can put him under.” Pidge put his hand to his lip, pounding his fist into his open palm after he’d thought of it. “How about we get some hazmat suits and sneak in there like those medtechs?”

Lance perked up with his own idea. “Or we could-”

That’s when another explosion sounded.

The three of them looked and saw where it had come from. From the east, just far enough away that everyone who was guarding where they were holding Shiro captive had to hop back into their rovers and drive out to investigate it. Lance couldn’t help but find it a bit suspicious how convenient that another explosion was, but he didn’t have much time to think about it. Whether it was another alien ship or an unfortunate coincidence wasn’t something that mattered right then. They could slide down the side of the cliff and be by Shiro’s side in five minutes tops. Then they could steal one of the rovers and drive out somewhere where they could talk and find out all the information to fill in the gaps about this Voltron.  
Plus, being in the spotlight for once for saving his hero quite appealed to Lance. 

If he got to be the one to free him, that was.

“What was that?” Hunk asked, panicking all over again. “Are those more aliens? Is this the apocalypse? Are we all gonna die?”

Pidge was squinting at a low humming that seemed to be approaching the crash site. “No. I think they were a distraction.” He pointed at the figure who’d driven a hoverbike all the way out here, dismounting it as if it were no big deal. “For him.”

“Figures he’d show up.” Lance growled, springing to his feet as he flung the binoculars he’d forgotten he was still holding at Pidge. “There’s no way that we’re letting him get in there before us. That guy is always trying to one up me!”

“Who?” The youngest asked, panting as he tried to catch them up while carrying the weight of his computer and everything else on his back.

“Keith!”

“Are you sure?” Hunk asked, somehow managing to keep up with him better than Pidge.

“Oh, I’d recognize that mullet anywhere!”

The two of them were already sliding down the cliffside when he’d just reached the edge, bracing himself as he slid down right behind them, but he wasn’t about to give up on asking about this stranger until he had his question answered.

“Who’s Keith?”

\-------------------------------

Keith had been preparing for this night ever since he’d first stumbled across the cave.

The Blue Lion markings were ones that fascinated him more than any subject at school ever had, drawing him further and further into the darkness of the cavern without him even realizing. When he came back the next time, he brought a flashlight with him, along with a camera to take pictures of everything that he found. There wasn’t really a reason he could use to explain why he felt drawn to them to anyone. The closest way he could describe it was that some energy had pulled him towards the cave in the first place, almost begging him to come in and explore its every crack and crevice, marking and doodle. Deciphering what they all meant was another challenge in of itself. Luckily for Keith, he wasn’t the type to back down from a challenge. Especially one that seemed to be a conspiracy theory all of his own.

Once he’d managed to figure out exactly when the arrival that they’d prophesied about was, he’d started devising a plan. He knew that the Garrison would be able to get to whatever crashed far faster than he could. And even if Keith beat them there, he had no idea what it was that was going to come crashing down, nor how long it would take to analyze it and bring all that he needed of it back to his place. So bit by bit, he managed to steal enough explosives from right under the nose of the very institution that had kicked him out for causing trouble to cause a distraction so big that they couldn’t stay with the ruins without sending some of the people guarding it over to investigate. Keith set it up far enough away from the cave that it was certain to be somewhere that whatever was arriving, wouldn’t land.

He dodged a bullet with his intuition alone, thankful as he watched the flames erupt in the distance that phase one of his plan had gone smoothly.

Phase two was the part of it that he was relying on instincts and instincts alone to lead him through. What awaited for him that the Garrison was working so hard to protect, he didn’t know. He parked his bike just around the corner, in a blind spot that nobody coming back would be able to see from the direction they’d be driving in. With a deep red handkerchief covering his mouth and his knife in its sheath, he braced himself for whoever and whatever was in the bubble that they’d built to ensure that whatever they had wouldn’t be seen. The markings had specified what exactly the arrival meant. There was no hint as to what he should’ve expected to find when he went in their, whether it be alien or human, foreign or Earthborn. As he raced through the entrance, further and further inside, the familiar beeping of a heart monitor sounded in his ear.

At least whoever had been piloting that ship had survived the crash.

“Hey!” A figure in a hazmat suit tried tugging Keith back, positioned just outside the door. How predictable. “What are you-”

He punched him unconscious before he could finish his sentence.

Brushing his hands together, Keith took a deep breath before he slammed the button that opened the door. The hiss of it was enough to alarm the ones inside, who didn’t stand a chance against him. While the Garrison trained all of its recruits to fight, only a certain number of them truly grasped onto the art. Throwing a few punches would only get you so far. It was knowing how to counter your opponents attacks, to spot their weaknesses and take advantage of them where you could, that you actually needed to survive in any sort of hand to hand combat. He had all of the medics down in no time, all it taking was a few kicks and punches to get about ten of them down. As soon as he was certain no one else was coming, he turned his attention to the patient strapped to the table. 

“Shiro?” Keith asked, lowering the cloth covering his mouth.

He turned his head towards him to make sure that it was him. Whatever they’d drugged him with, didn’t seem like it would be wearing off anytime soon. He looked his mentor up and down, frowning as he noticed all of the changes. A robotic arm, a scar across his nose, and a tuft of white hair? While Keith was thankful that he was alright, it was jarring to notice all of these differences at once. It almost felt like this wasn’t his Shiro, in a way. That he’d been replaced with some clone that’d fought in battles that the real one would’ve been took weak to fight in with his disease. Knowing how much of a toll that his disease had been taking on his body, Keith was shocked that Shiro turned up back on Earth with only these few things rather than all of his limbs being replaced by alien tech. And possibly a few organs, too. 

Keith had just cut Shiro out of his restraints, adjusting his weight to rest comfortably onto him when another voice rang out in the silence. “Oh, nope. No you don’t. I’m saving Shiro.”

“Taylor?” Keith asked, eyes wide as Lance hoisted Shiro’s other arm over his shoulder so that Keith wouldn’t have to bare all of his weight himself. “The Garrison still hasn’t kicked you out yet?”

“You’re one to talk.” Lance mumbled, leaning forward so that he could catch Keith’s gaze. Not much had changed about him since he’d been kicked out, aside from his hair being a bit longer and his eyes being a bit fiercer. Unfortunately for everyone, his personality was still the same. “And the name’s Lance. I was a cargo pilot in your class, remember?”

“I could’ve sworn your name was Taylor.”

“Well if you’d been better with names, maybe you wouldn’t have flunked out.” 

“Could we save the arguing for later?” Keith was clearly growing tired of something that seemed to be as small as forgetting a name, unaware of how offended Lance truly was. “I don’t know how much time we have left before another wave of security comes after us and I, for one, don’t wanna be sitting in a holding cell all night for attempted kidnapping.”

Lance had to keep his jaw from dropping at this. With the past that Keith had had at the Garrison, this shouldn’t have surprised the younger in the least, with all the rumors that’d circulated around after he’d left. Yet hearing the words coming straight out of his mouth without a sliver of doubt felt too shocking to be true. “You’ve been in one before?”

“Way more than one.” Keith said as he starting matching his footsteps with Lance, who was trying his hardest to not let the hero on his shoulders topple over. “And they’re not pretty, even if they’re meant for minors.”

The two of them somehow managed to put their bickering aside and help Shiro as gently as they could out into the night. They might have been too late to keep him from being forced into unconsciousness, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t make up for it by protecting him now. Lance called out to Pidge and Hunk, getting them to follow along to wherever Keith was headed. They’d been keeping watch for them outside, in case the explosion wasn’t a long enough distraction and those guards came racing back angrier than ever. Both Keith and Lance thanked them, the former taking a step lead as he showed them all to his hoverbike. Now, here was a problem that he hadn’t taken into account when planning for every possible outcome of this arrival. One additional person wouldn’t have been an issue, but four?

Keith wasn’t even sure that his hoverbike could take that much weight.

“We’d better hurry.” Hunk had still kept watch on them to be on the safe side. And it was a good thing that he had. “They’re coming back and they do not look happy.”

Lance helped Keith hoist Shiro into Pidge’s arms, who sat with him right behind Keith as he took his position as the driver. He turned around to Pidge before he started up the engine. “Be careful with him, you got that?”

“I’ll try but why am I the one holding this guy?”

Keith couldn’t come up with a response before Hunk had climbed onto the back of the bike, causing it to tip back down a bit too close to the ground for comfort. 

“Are you sure this can take all of our weight?” Hunk’s worried voice only made Keith that much more anxious.

“Nope.” He responded as he revved up the engine. “But you never know until you try, right?”

They were flying across the desert before anyone had time to second guess themselves and hop off. Keith ground his teeth as he noticed how close the rovers were gaining on them, pushing his foot down on the pedal to try and accelerate it as much as he could to overcompensate for it. His hair was flying in his face at all sorts of angles, which Keith would have normally enjoyed, was he not being chased down by dozens of angry Garrison recruits. They were driving rather close to the edge of the ledge of the cliff they were chasing them through. Keith knew in that moment what he had to do, as dangerous for them as it might’ve been. Hopefully the airbags would be enough to save them from being thrown face first into the fronts of their rovers. Though if he was being honest, what would a few cuts and bruises do to them?

Absolutely nothing.

“Big man, lean right!” He called out behind him.

Hunk did as he was told and before he could realize the damage he’d done, two rovers went crashing into the side of the cliff. A few others behind them got caught up in the mix up, dwindling the numbers of those chasing them drastically. But there were still enough that Keith wasn’t about to let them get off that easy. If they wanted to chase them until the bitter end, then he was going to make it as bitter as he possibly could. Tonight might’ve been about reuniting with Shiro and saving the ones who’d helped him get away safely but it was also becoming a night of rebellion against the ones who’d thrown him out without warning. Who’d left him to wander, lost in the world, a year too old to return to the orphanage that he’d once called home. There was nobody for him to call, no one who would care to come looking for him. They’d left Keith to fend for himself, completely and utterly alone in every sense of the word.

“Big man, lean left!”

This time the trick didn’t work as well as he had hoped but that was too be expected. Hunk was nervously commentating on the states of the rovers Keith helped to wreck and the people within them, while Pidge and Lance were yelling as they had been for the entire few minutes that they’d been involved in this chase. The latter’s mind was racing so fast that he could barely keep up with his own thoughts. He was desperately holding onto a wing, trying to reach out further to the front to grab a better hold on the hoverbike. Grabbing onto Keith would’ve been a bad idea but he didn’t really have much of a choice right then. That was, until he realized what they were headed towards. He looked over at Pidge, whose eyes were frozen in fear as they stared at the impending doom ahead, then back at Hunk, whose head was tucked down so he wouldn’t have to look.

“Is that a cliff up ahead?” Lance felt stupid for asking, but what else was he supposed to do? Accept that Keith was about to kill all of them at once?

He smirked, knowing exactly how to stick this landing almost as perfectly as the one who’d taught it to him. “Yup.”

And into the darkness they fell, screaming like it would be the last anyone would ever hear of them.

\--------------------------------

“Everyone alright?” Keith asked after they’d all settled down outside of his shack.

Lance’s heart was still racing but his breaths were starting to slow. Hunk had run off somewhere to go and vomit while Pidge checked in his bag to make sure that nothing had been damaged. Lance had been smart enough to give Hunk his backpack so that he wouldn’t have to worry about it when he helped carry Shiro. Though in his current state, Lance could only hope that he wasn’t using it as an honorary barf bag. He should’ve expected Keith to be this reckless, from all of the simulations back at the Garrison. The amount of times they’d had to stop so that he wouldn’t compromise the entirety of their fake mission just to show off were more times than Lance could count, but it turned out that that impulsiveness was good for something. There wasn’t a chance that he could’ve gotten them out of this alive, so the fact that Keith could seemed unreal. 

“Aside from some serious emotional whiplash, yeah.” Lance laughed, looking behind him at Shiro resting in Keith’s seat. “I think we’re fine.”

“You guys aren’t thinking about sneaking back in tonight, are you?”

Lance looked at Keith for a minute. He’d gone over to Shiro’s side, pressing two fingers against his wrist to make sure his pulse wasn’t getting weaker. Being there for him was something that Keith wasn’t going to argue, no matter what Lance said or did. He felt himself relax when he noticed the mullet check on not only Shiro, but Pidge and Hunk as well. Granted, it was probably to make sure that he hadn’t broken any of their bones and that they wouldn’t sue him for damage but it was a start. Lance didn’t know how long the five of them were going to be stuck out here like this but he figured that being there for each other in the ways that they could would matter to most. Leaving was out of the question, even if Pidge and Hunk thought otherwise. They were all at the scene together and were spotted. So if one of them went back, all of them would get caught, and Lance wasn’t about to be that idiot again.

“I don’t think we could even if we wanted to.”

“That’s the spirit.” Keith said with obvious sarcasm. Lance rolled his eyes. “If we need more food when morning rolls around, I can always sneak up and get us some. The Garrison hardly ever notices when food disappears, anyways.”

“I told you that it wasn’t such a big deal, Hunk!” Lance turned around and called to his friend, laughing as he did. There was still one bigger question he had in regards to what their night would entail. “Breakfast sounds nice and all but, where are we gonna sleep?”

Keith took a moment to think up an answer to that question. It was true that his place didn’t have that much space. There was hardly enough room for him, considering it was roughly the size of a shed and all. But if he moved a few things around, or if some of them were okay with sleeping outside if that plan didn’t work, then it seemed like they’d all be able to rest up for their adventure tomorrow. Keith wasn’t about to worry them with the details right now, not after he saw just how shaken up that hoverbike ride had made them. Any other surprises and he might kill them with stress, which wasn’t at all what he wanted. They needed the rest and Keith wasn’t about to leave Shiro outside when there was a perfectly comfortable couch inside for him to sleep on.

“I’ll show you.”

Lance called the others over and they left Shiro outside in the meantime. They each had to cover up their reactions when Keith showed them inside. Pidge and Hunk were on the verge of snickering while Lance had to try to not wrinkle his nose in disgust, even if it was a joke. It looked like a mini hurricane had swept its way through. Old cans of food and water bottles sat on a makeshift coffee table (a few cinder blocks and a slab of concrete, to be exact), while technology filled the room’s corners. A white sheet was draped over something that looked to be the size of a bulletin board. Lance was tempted to sneak past Keith and take a peak underneath of it but knew that any sort of invasion of his privacy would have consequences that he wasn’t about to risk the chance of finding out. 

“Shiro gets the couch, no questions asked.” Keith said as he started clearing various crumpled pieces of paper and pens off of the sheets, flattening the fabric out as he went. “Lance, you can have my sleeping bag.” He motioned with his head towards the space underneath of it. “There should be some extra blankets down there too for Pidge and Hunk. Probably some extra clothes if you need them to sleep in but, looks like some of you came prepared.”

Lance felt the blood rush to his cheeks with that last comment, tugging on the drawstring of his Star Wars pajama pants. “Then where are you gonna sleep?”

“I don’t sleep.” Keith mumbled, unphased from his unexpected spring cleaning, despite it being closer to summer.

“Then how the fuck are you still alive?”

Keith looked up from his tidying up and met Lance’s eyes, expression nothing but serious. “Maybe I’m not.”

Lance nearly jumped out of his skin at this while Hunk and Pidge cracked up. He could even hear Keith chuckle as he leaned down and grabbed the sleeping bag for him, shoving it into his arms with a half smile. Lance found it kind of strange how he hadn’t seen both of his lips curl up into even the smallest of grins but he wasn’t about to push him. He set up the sleeping bag on the other side of the room while Hunk and Pidge figured out where to set their blankets up, taking his place by Keith’s side as they went out to help Shiro inside. There were some minor troubles working together just doing this, with Keith walking a bit too fast for Lance to keep up or Lance complaining that he wasn’t taking enough of Shiro’s weight on himself. But Keith was able to work with him and they got Shiro inside and onto the couch.

That had to be progress, right?

Lance had settled into his spot on the right side of the room, snuggled deep into Keith’s sleeping bag. But no matter how many times he closed his eyes, no matter how many different ways he positioned himself, sleep wouldn’t find its way to him. There wasn’t any reason that he shouldn’t have been able to sleep. He’d done this at countless sleepovers before, when he’d lost whatever competition his friends had held to decide who got to sleep anywhere else aside from the floor. Out here in the desert, he could feel something that he hadn’t felt anywhere else. It felt like a voice beckoning him to come and search, to leave this place behind and find the source of this weird energy that seemed to be feeding ideas into his head. Had this been how Keith had known that Shiro was going to show up tonight? 

Keith.

He’d been outside the entire night, working on something that Lance couldn’t quite hear. Maybe he could use some company. As Lance unzipped the sleeping bag and draped it around his shoulders, he remembered the day that Keith had been kicked out. All of the cadets had seen it coming. Some of them even celebrated the news, while others shared the same looks of confusion with Lance. They’d been expecting some kind of last big thing from Keith, but there was nothing. Lance could’ve sworn that Keith was trying a bit harder than usual to stay in line. Kicking him out almost seemed like it was a precautionary measure, so that Keith would be out of their hair and they could work on the other cadets who really wanted to learn. That’d sacrificed hours of their freetime to study hard enough to join them.

Lance couldn’t help but think that there was more to Keith than met the eye. That the reason why Shiro had covered for him time and time again was because there was a side to him that nobody but him saw. Lance would ask him but he knew that all of the answers he’d give would be one word at best. He found his way out of Keith’s shack, too overwhelmed with the mysterious energy to stay in there and snoop around. It would cause too much noise if he did, much like the floorboards had when Lance had walked across them. He’d been just careful enough to not wake anyone up, welcoming the cool air on his face and the starlight that dripped down from the sky like dimmed down rays of the sun. Lance missed when he was younger and had all the time in the world to wish on stars, dreaming to once fly up among them.

The reality was that he was failing out of his classes at a rate faster than he could keep up with. The stress of it all had been taking a toll on him that he wouldn’t admit to but an adventure filled evening like this had been just the thing to reignite the passion he needed to continue on pushing through all of his troubles. That was how the saying went, wasn’t it? The grass is always greener on the other side, or something like that. If only Lance actually believed sayings like that. He believe in more of the fake it ‘til you make it mentality. That acting more confident than he was would lead to more confidence, more talented to more talent. Still, with everyone around him proving their worth without having to work nearly as hard as Lance did, or act as fake, he couldn’t help but question if he would ever be someone worthy of a mission or if he should just quit while he was ahead.

Lance was awoken out of his trance of self-deprecating while stargazing by the shouting of curses behind him. He’d completely forgotten that he’d come out here to see exactly what Keith was up to. From the sounds of it, not something fun. Lance turned around to see him underneath of his hoverbike. Or, rather, his legs sticking out from underneath of it. There was a toolbox by his side, with various wrenches and screwdrivers haphazardly lying nearby. One of his hands was grabbing at the dirt. It was almost painful for Lance to watch how close Keith’s fingers were to grabbing something, as little as centimeters away from various handles. Lance rolled his eyes after a few minutes of watching, kneeling down next to him and passing the wrench that Keith seemed to be attempting to get.

“Ow!” Keith groaned as he bashed his head on the underside of his bike. He slid out from underneath of it as quickly as he could, dropping the wrench so he could wipe his hands off on a grease stained towel beside him. He finally looked up at Lance. The sight of him almost seemed to make his look harden, which seemed ridiculous but, given Keith’s history, Lance could understand why. “Can’t sleep?” 

“Not with a racket like this outside.” Lance replied, holding out his hand for Keith to take. “Thought you could use some help.”

Keith ignored it, propping himself off of the ground so he could stand on the same level as Lance. “I’m fine but I appreciate the offer.”

“No need to be so cold, mullet.” Lance smiled slightly at Keith, who offered him nothing but the grimace he seemed to wear everywhere with him. It made him wonder when the last time he smiled had been, if he ever had at all. He averted his gaze to the hoverbike. “She took a lot more than she could handle out there, didn’t she?”

“Yeah.”

The two of them shared a silent moment. Mind-reading would’ve been a helpful superpower for either of them to have right then, they thought to themselves. Lance couldn’t deny that he was more than a bit upset that Keith hadn’t remembered his name, after every simulation that they’d been through together. That he was still acting like this, even after having Shiro back. Despite all of that, deep beneath all of the annoyance and frustration, Lance felt a strange connection to Keith’s current situation. He wouldn’t have been able to explain it even if someone had asked him. It was such a miniscule feeling that he might not have even noticed it. If it hadn’t been for the way that Keith looked up at the stars, mirroring Lance’s exact pose from earlier almost exactly. The younger took a step closer to the older, hoping that it wouldn’t push him away.

“What’s out here beyond that shed of yours?” Lance asked finally. 

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out myself.” Keith’s words were riddled with drowsiness, though Lance didn’t bother to comment on it. “It’s almost like I was-”

“Drawn to this place?”

Keith’s eyes widened in excitement as he turned to look at Lance. “You feel it too?”

“Seems like it’d be impossible to not.” There were many more questions that Lance wanted to ask him. About how he’d known how Shiro was going to be there, about how he’d set up that distraction. But with Keith’s yawning, he knew that he should make this exchange as brief as he could. “Are you gonna explain all of this to everyone in the morning?”

“I’ll try my best.”

“Here.” Lance took the sleeping bag off of his shoulders and handed it to Keith. “Go in and rest. I’ll be fine out here.”

“You don’t have to.” He said, trying to push it back into Lance’s arms. “I’ve been running on less sleep than this for years now. I’ll be fine.”

Lance pouted, wrapping it around Keith’s shoulders before he could object. “I’m not taking no for an answer. So go inside and sleep. I’ll stay out here.”

There was a brief moment where Lance thought that Keith was going to slap him or something, with how scrutinizingly he looked him up and down. Much to his surprise, the mullet walked away without so much as laying a finger on him. Lance shrugged and turned to go back to the bike. Maybe if he could position himself comfortably in the seat, he wouldn’t have to miss out on any sleep after all. It would be hard to sleep even if he could find a place to. There were millions of questions that had lined themselves up in Lance’s mind, adding up to a list longer than he could count, that he wanted to ask Keith. Curiosity had always been a trait that’d gotten Lance into more trouble than it was worth, so he decided to stay out of it. Plus, he was certain the answers would all come to light with the rising of the sun.

“Your name really isn’t Taylor?”

“No, it’s not.” Lance didn’t have the heart to tell Keith that it was a nickname after a joke between him and Hunk. At least, not right then. “Goodnight, Keith.”

“Goodnight, Lance.”

Keith flashed him the world’s shortest smile before dashing inside, leaving Lance to wonder why he hadn’t wanted him to look at it longer.

\-------------------------

“Shiro.” Keith whispered, trying to keep his voice low and voice at a whisper so as to not wake up the others in the room. “Wake up.”

“Sheesh, Keith.” He whispered back, yawning as he propped himself up. There were no signs of hesitation in his movements, which meant that there weren’t any major injuries like Keith had been expecting there to be. And he was chuckling like he used to. Which was bonus points, in his eyes. Even if it was directed at him. “I crash land a ship, get strapped to a table, drugged into unconsciousness, and I can’t get even get half of a full night’s sleep?”

Keith shook his head, chuckling to himself. Space might’ve taken his arm, but it had certainly kept his sense of humor. “Well, sorry that I’m trying to protect your personal information from being exposed, but the cadets sleeping in here know about you. And I wanted to talk to you about… something important before they wake up.”

“Oh.” Shiro dangled his legs over the edge of the couch. He let out a deep sigh. Keith hated how he’d always done that when he brought this up, even if it was rather indirect. “That. You probably didn’t expect to see me again at all, did you?”

Keith frowned a bit at that question. He’d known Shiro just as long as Lance and Hunk had, but their connections to him were entirely different. While they were just his cadets, Keith was something more of a younger brother to Shiro. At least, he felt that way on his end. There had been countless opportunities for the older to give up on the younger. To send him back to the orphanage where everyone else said that he belonged. But Shiro had talked the higher ups out of it every single one of those times. He’d told Keith once that he would never give up on him and he’d stuck to his word. What Shiro didn’t know was that, that day, Keith had promised him the exact same. He never thought that there would come a time where he actually would have to save him. Keith somehow assumed that Shiro was a stable rock in his life, oblivious to all of the signs that pointed to him falling apart. It was one of Keith’s biggest regrets.

That he hadn’t noticed Shiro had needed saving much sooner. 

“You don’t have to worry about that anymore.” Shiro’s smile was thin and forced. Nothing like the warm ones that Keith was so used to seeing. “I mean, the not seeing me again part. Can’t say the same for what I know you’re thinking about.”

Keith took advantage of this time to take a closer look at Shiro. So much had changed about him that only a handful of people would’ve noticed. If they took the time to look, which most of them wouldn’t. His eyes kept darting back and forth from him to the wall. He wasn’t able to focus on one thing at a time, which alarmed Keith. The abnormalities didn’t even end there. He wasn’t exactly able to describe it but, he noticed that there was this feeling of uneasiness that surrounded Shiro’s every move. Whenever Keith lifted his arm to push some of his hair behind his ear, he’d tense up. Almost like he was expecting him to hurt him. There was also the incessant tapping of Shiro’s foot on the wooden floor, which it didn’t seem like he noticed. He was waiting for something to come and get him. To drag him back up to the hell that he’d just escaped from.

“Then let’s talk about it outside.” Keith stood up, watching as Shiro did himself. It was kind of amazing how someone could look so put together yet feel so broken on the inside. Even if he was in prisoner’s clothes. “Oh, and if you want to change out of those…” Keith looked under the bed and pulled out a beaten up cardboard box, blowing off the thick layer of dust that covered it. He pulled out a vest, a pair of pants, and shoes. Tears brimmed at the edges of Keith’s eyes, unable to tell if they were from the dust or who those clothes used to belong to. “These should be your size, right?”

Shiro looked Keith up and down as he handed them to him. “Aren’t they-?”

“I’ll be outside waiting for you when you’re done.” Keith walked to the door, only to peek back in right as he took a step out of it. “And I’d keep that bodysuit on if I were you. These are close quarters and I don’t exactly have a private enough place for you to strip down completely.”

As soon as he’d said that, Keith shut the door behind him.

He tried to think of where exactly they could go to talk. Lance was outside somewhere, probably close to the shack, so there wasn’t a chance that they could stay anywhere near it. Out in the open seemed to be their best bet. As long as it was far enough away that none of them could hide behind somewhere close to his place and listen in on their private exchange. Keith settled on walking forward into the desert. It was within Shiro’s line of vision so he wouldn’t have any trouble finding him. And it gave Keith some time to organize his thoughts. Childhood memories had come flooding back to him the moment that he started rummaging through that damn box. He’d wanted to throw it away for a while now. Maybe if he burned it, then maybe the past would burn with it, and he could be known as something other than the orphan that had been taken under the wing of the Garrison’s best senior pilot.

Keith had been more than aware that everyone at that school had hated him. There were the occasional ones who seemed empathic, like Lance, but even then, they could switch on him in a matter of seconds if he did one thing they didn’t like. Punching James Griffin had been one of the smaller incidents in a long history of his outbursts. Keith couldn’t even bother to care when anybody lectured him about why it was wrong. Anyone except Shiro, that was. He was the reason that Keith hadn’t given up on himself completely. He couldn’t remember the last time that someone had fought for him like that, seeing right through the walls that he put up. Shiro seemed to know what he wanted better than he did himself. The day that he’d told him that he was leaving, Keith vowed to push through what felt like losing his family a second time and be a better student.

Clearly that’d worked out well.

“So, what’s the update?” Shiro asked from behind him. “The Garrison finally kicked you out?”

Keith held his breath as he turned around. He hadn’t cried many times that he could remember in his life but seeing Shiro in his dad’s outfit almost did him in. He’d tried not to look at him in it. To keep his eyes on his face and not dip any lower. Unfortunately for Keith, his peripheral vision had caught a glimpse of the yellow on his collar and his eyes had darted down before he could will them to stop. It had been so long since he’d seen that outfit. Since his pop had taken him up in his arms, the smoke from the fires he’d put out earlier that day lingering around him, twirling his son around the room without a care in the world. There were times where he wouldn’t pick up Keith from daycare until late, later progressing into him having to sit all alone on the sidewalk as he waited for him to arrive. Their life together hadn’t been perfect but it had been theirs.

He couldn’t throw away his last bits of happiness, as much as he wanted to.

“I didn’t get into any fights or steal any cars after you left, I promise.” Keith wished that they could be talking by the house, so that he wouldn’t have to feel so awkward about not having anything to lean on. “They told me that kicking me out would be putting their best foot forward. A preemptive measure so that I wouldn’t cause any more trouble.”

Shiro’s eyes widened with shock, a bit too wide to be genuine. Keith hated that he had to put on an act for him like this, as every cadet had had to, but it wasn’t his place to call him out on it now. Maybe when he was back to acting like himself. “Did Iverson say that?”

“Who else?” Keith snorted. “You know how much he hates cadets who screw around like me.”

“I’m going to kick his ass as soon as we get back up there, not just for you.” Shiro held up his robotic arm, hand balled into a fist. “If he wants to strap me to a table all because of this, then that’s what’s gonna hurt him.”

Keith tried to chuckle, but it came out as something far more awkward and nervous than that. Shiro caught onto the strangeness of it instantly, putting his arm on his shoulder for support. He shrugged it off and looked down at the ground. The longer the silence carried on, the more the weight pressing down on his chest seemed to get heavier. Keith shouldn’t have felt so anxious about asking for specifics about what had happened up there, yet here he was. Biting his tongue and trying to hold back any questions that popped into his head. There was something that told him that Shiro wasn’t up for talking about it. Everything but his disease felt like it was off limits to Keith, a line that he shouldn’t cross if he knew what was best for him.

“So, about, you know.” Keith kept his eyes focused on the scenery ahead of them. The sand wasn’t much to look at but the sky was a brilliant shade of blue right then. It was soothing, somehow, with clouds spread out like pulled apart cotton balls. “Your condition.”

“I can’t say for sure that I’m better.” Shiro joined him in looking off in the distance, though the sky he saw was duller. The clouds weren’t as white nor was the blue as bright around it. “My head’s pretty scrambled. For all I know, my arm was ripped off in a battle and they saved my life.”

“But couldn’t that have still stopped it from spreading?”

Shiro closed his eyes and sighed. “Keith, you know that’s not how it works.”

The younger wanted to argue but he couldn’t come up with an argument to counter it with. The reality was that that was true. Shiro had never been very open with Keith about his disease in the first place. He still wasn’t. He hadn’t even told him what it was called or if there was a cure or if the day he’d received his diagnosis, was the day that he’d received his death sentence as well. The amount of life that Shiro had left to live was a secret that he kept to himself. He’d given Keith a vague few years at best, as he had with everyone, but everyone knew that there had to have been a more specific time frame. A few years seemed like too generous of an amount, considering how rapidly his health seemed to be declining. Keith didn’t know what to say to Shiro other than he was sorry for talking about it in the first place.

Then he remembered a certain someone who’d told him to relay a message to his mentor, if he managed to find him before he did.

“I kept in touch with Adam after you left.” Keith said, trying to change the subject to a happier note. He looked over to see Shiro not bothering to look towards him. His head was tilted slightly in the opposite direction. Keith chastised himself for talking about it but what else was he supposed to say? “I know now might not be the best time to talk about him but he told me that he regrets what he said. That he wishes he could say sorry and make up with you.”

“He shouldn’t be sorry for anything.” While Shiro was normally the one who could see through Keith’s front, their roles seemed to have reversed with this conversation. Shiro wasn’t acting right. He was being stiffer than normal, trying to divert attention from himself to what Keith had been up to. The younger didn’t like it at all. “I went my way and he went his. Nobody knew that there were going to be aliens out there, and now I have to find some way to push through freezing up at the helm of a ship every single time I try to pilot. The rest of my life I want to spend defending the universe, no matter how hard it ends up being.”

“Then shouldn’t we be finding you someplace else to live?” Keith tried to keep his voice down but he didn’t feel like it mattered, considering there wasn’t anybody for miles with how far out they were in the desert. Anybody but cadets who’d be thrown out next time they went back to that school, anyways. “All you’re gonna see out here are fucking pilots and ships! I still have the hoverbike you gave me!” He took a moment to take a few breaths under the concerned eyes that Shiro was giving him. Then, “You shouldn’t be pushing yourself any more than you already have.”

“I appreciate it, Keith.” He looked down at him with softened eyes. Ones that had gained wrinkles and dark circles so deep that Keith could only wonder what else the ones who’d captured him had done. How that arm of his really came about. If it was an accident or a part of some other, far more sinister, plan. “Really, I do. But there are more important things going on right now that we need to deal with first. What was it that you wanted to show me?”

“Right.” Keith sighed, trying not to let his voice drop to a grumble. He didn’t want to seem ungrateful to Shiro but it was hard to not. He needed rest but he refused to get it, no matter argument Keith would make to say otherwise. “I told Lance a bit about it last night but I promised I’d explain more to him when everyone woke up.”

Shiro cocked an eyebrow. “Keeping secret boyfriends from me now, are we?”

Keith was too stunned at the joke to react. His cheeks flushed bright red, the only words he could think of coming out unintelligible stuttering. Shiro knew that Keith was gay. He’d been the one who’d helped Keith come to terms with that, from the way he talked about Adam and the way the two of them were always flirting. That wasn’t the part of the joke that bothered him, even if he wasn’t out openly to anybody else but Shiro. What bothered Keith about it was that he didn’t even consider Lance to be a friend yet. Let alone, a romantic interest, or anything more than such. In the entirety of his life he hadn’t thought about another person like that. Sure, he’d thought that boys were cute and thought that it’d be fun to be in a relationship. But the right one still had yet to come into his life and turn him into a mushy romantic mess or however it went. 

And Keith was positive that that hadn’t happened with Lance, even if his cheeks seemed to say otherwise.

“There’s not a chance in hell I’d date him, of all the boys at the Garrison.” Keith finally managed to mumble. He’d started walking back towards his shed, Shiro following behind him a few steps later. “Plus, I know a straight boy when I see one. He couldn’t represent the single flirtatious heterosexual type any better.”

“You’d be surprised.” Shiro whistled. “You sure are a handful, you know that?”

“Oh, I know.” Keith punched Shiro’s shoulder playfully. “I learned how to be from the best.”

They continued on like this the entire walk back to Keith’s shed, both of them failing to notice that Lance had been there the entire time, running off and back to his makeshift bed on Keith’s bike with his heart racing more than it should’ve been.

All of them blissfully unaware of the future that would come out of stumbling upon something as fantastical as a mechanical Blue Lion.


End file.
